To this decree attaches not only the necessary
importance and interest which belongs to any ecumenical decision upon a
disputed doctrinal question with regard to the incarnation of the Son
of God, but an altogether accidental interest, arising from the fact
that by this decree a Pope of Rome is stricken with anathema in the
person of Honorius. I need hardly remind the reader how many
interesting and difficult questions in theology such an action on the
part of an Ecumenical Council raises, and how all important, not to say
vital, to such as accept the ruling of the recent Vatican Council, it
is that some explanation of this fact should be arrived at which will
be satisfactory. It would be highly improper for me in these
pages to discuss the matter theologically. Volumes on each side
have been written on this subject, and to these I must refer the
reader, but in doing so I hope I may be pardoned if I add a word of
counsel—to read both sides. If one’s knowledge is
derived only from modern Eastern, Anglican or Protestant writers, such
as “Janus and the Council,” the Père Gratry’s
“Letters,” or Littledale’s controversial books
against Rome, one is apt to be as much one-sided as if he took his
information from Cardinal Baronius, Cardinal Bellarmine,
Rohrbacher’s History, or from the recent work on the
subject by Pennacchi.335335 Pennacchi. De Honorii I., Romani Pontificis, causa in
Concilio VI. Perhaps the
average reader will hardly find a more satisfactory treatment than that
by Bossuet in the Defensio. (Liber VII., cap. xxi.,
etc.)

It will be sufficient for the purposes of this volume to
state that Roman Catholic Curialist writers are not at one as to how
the matter is to be treated. Pennacchi, in his work referred to
above, is of opinion that Honorius’s letters were strictly
speaking Papal decrees, set forth auctoritate apostolica, and
therefore irreformable, but he declares, contrary to the opinion of
almost all theologians and to the decree of this Council, that they are
orthodox, and that the Council erred in condemning them; as he
expresses it, the decree rests upon an error in facto
dogmatico. To save an Ecumenical Synod from error, he thinks
the synod ceased to be ecumenical before it took this action, and was
at that time only a synod of a number of Orientals! Cardinal
Baronius has another way out of the difficulty. He says that the
name of Honorius was forged and put in the decree by an erasure in the
place of the name of Theodore, the quondam Patriarch, who soon after
the Council got himself restored to the Patriarchal position.
Baronius moreover holds that Honorius’s letters have been
corrupted, that the Acts of the Council have been corrupted, and, in
short, that everything which declares or proves that Honorius was a
heretic or was condemned by an Ecumenical Council as such, is
untrustworthy and false. The groundlessness, not to say
absurdity, of Baronius’s view has been often exposed by those of
his own communion, a brief but sufficient summary of the refutation
will be found in Hefele, who while taking a very halting and
unsatisfactory position himself, yet is perfectly clear that
Baronius’s contention is utterly indefensible.336336 Hefele.
History of the Councils. Vol. V., p. 190
et seqq.

Most Roman controversialists of recent years have
admitted both the fact of Pope Honorius’s condemnation (which
Baronius denies), and the monothelite (and therefore heretical)
character of his epistles, but they are of opinion that these letters
were not his ex cathedrâ utterances as Doctor Universalis,
but mere expressions of the private opinion of the Pontiff as a
theologian. With this matter we have no concern in this
connexion.

I shall therefore say nothing further on this point but
shall simply supply the leading proofs that Honorius was as a matter of
fact condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

1. His condemnation is found in the Acts in the
xiiith Session, near the beginning.

2. His two letters were ordered to be burned at
the same session.

3523. In the
xvith Session the bishops exclaimed “Anathema to the
heretic Sergius, to the heretic Cyrus, to the heretic Honorius,
etc.”

4. In the decree of faith published at the
xviijth Session it is stated that “the originator of
all evil…found a fit tool for his will in…Honorius, Pope of
Old Rome, etc.”

5. The report of the Council to the Emperor says
that “Honorius, formerly bishop of Rome” they had
“punished with exclusion and anathema” because he followed
the monothelites.

6. In its letter to Pope Agatho the Council says
it “has slain with anathema Honorius.”

7. The imperial decree speaks of the “unholy
priests who infected the Church and falsely governed” and
mentions among them “Honorius, the Pope of Old Rome, the
confirmer of heresy who contradicted himself.” The Emperor
goes on to anathematize “Honorius who was Pope of Old Rome, who
in everything agreed with them, went with them, and strengthened the
heresy.”

9. That Honorius was anathematized by the Sixth
Council is mentioned in the Trullan Canons (No. j.).

10. So too the Seventh Council declares its
adhesion to the anathema in its decree of faith, and in several places
in the acts the same is said.

11. Honorius’s name was found in the Roman
copy of the Acts. This is evident from Anastasius’s life of
Leo II. (Vita Leonis II.)

12. The Papal Oath as found in the Liber
Diurnus338338 Ed. Eugène de Rozière. Paris, 1869, No.
84. taken by each
new Pope from the fifth to the eleventh century, in the form probably
prescribed by Gregory II., “smites with eternal anathema the
originators of the new heresy, Sergius, etc., together with Honorius,
because he assisted the base assertion of the heretics.”

13. In the lesson for the feast of St. Leo II. in
the Roman Breviary the name of Pope Honorius occurs among those
excommunicated by the Sixth Synod. Upon this we may well hear
Bossuet: “They suppress as far as they can, the Liber
Diurnus: they have erased this from the Roman Breviary.
Have they therefore hidden it? Truth breaks out from all sides,
and these things become so much the more evident, as they are the more
studiously put out of sight.”339339 Bossuet.
Def. Cleri Gal., Lib. vij., cap. xxvj.

With such an array of proof no conservative historian,
it would seem, can question the fact that Honorius, the Pope of Rome,
was condemned and anathematized as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical
Council.